Central and Eastern Europe, Past and Present.

Recent Revelations from the Stasi Archives.

The past few days have seen a series of fresh revelations about the notorious East German Secret Police – the Stasi. Firstly, previously classified documents released from the Stasi archive have revealed that East German officials were secretly negotiating the extradition of notorious Nazi War Criminal Alois Brunner from Syria during the 1980s, an event which failed to transpire due to the revolution of 1989. However, the West German intelligence agency BND also recently admitted to the shredding of a 518 page secret file on Brunner during the 1990s, leading to claims of a cover up and allegations that Brunner may have been working as an informant for the BND after he became resident in Syria in the 1950s in return for high level ‘protection’.

Secondly, evidence has emerged to suggest that the Stasi may have played a larger role in the 1967 shooting of student Benno Ohnesorg than previously thought, an event which is widely credited as the catalyst for the radicalisation of the West German left. Karl-Heinz Kurras, the Berlin policeman who shot Ohnesorg had previously been ‘outed’ as a Stasi agent in 2009, a development which spawned a new investigation into Ohensorg’s death. Now a leaked prosecutor’s report has claimed that Kurras fired at Ohensorg deliberately. The report has also given rise to claims that that Horst Mahler – a founding member of the radical Baader-Meinhof gang, who conducted a violent terrorist campaign during the 1970s, during which time many of their members were given refuge in the GDR – also worked as an inoffizielle Mitarbeiter (informal collaborator) for the Stasi until 1970.

However, my favourite Stasi-related story this week has to be the publication of this collection of archived images. The photographs, unearthed from the Stasi archive by photographer Simon Menner and published this week by Spiegel Online, were originally taken as part of a course designed to teach Stasi officers ‘the art of disguise’ and show individuals clad in various guises!

Stasi Chic: fur coat, fur hat and the obligatory sunglasses!

‘Tourist with Camera’ – a favoured disguise used by Stasi surveillance agents.

[For a wider selection of photos see Spiegel Online. The photographs are currently on display in a Berlin exhibition, ‘Pictures from the Secret Stasi Archives’]

These photos are rather amusing, reminiscent of bad 1980s spy movies involving secret agents with fake moustaches who look anything but inconspicuous – and having viewed the photos, I couldn’t help but conclude that had I been a citizen of the former GDR I probably would have suspected anybody who wore sunglasses of being a Stasi officer! Other photographs in the collection have more sinister undertones however, including photographs of private homes – taken before the Stasi conducted secret searches, in order to document the rooms so that they could later be restored exactly to their previous condition to hide any traces of their presence.

In her book Stasiland, Anna Funder also discusses the art of Stasi disguise; describing the boxes of fake wigs and moustaches and the list of coded observation signals discovered in the old Stasi offices after the revolution of 1989, leading her to liken the Stasi to ‘rather nasty boy scouts’. In a meeting with one former Stasi officer, Herr Christian, Funder describes how he demonstrated ‘a sense of fun’ about his former occupation. Part of his account is reproduced here:

“There are parts of it [working for the Stasi] that were fun though … I think I had the only job in the world where I got to go into a warehouse each morning and decide, ‘who will I be today?’”[He laughs] “I got to choose a disguise. Sometimes I’d be a park ranger – that was a green uniform, sometimes a garbage collector in overalls, or someone come to repair the wiring. I really liked being a Western tourist because the clothes were much better quality – real leather gloves – and I got to drive a Mercedes, or at least a VW Golf … But do you know what was best? Best of all was when I’d dress up as a blind man: I’d have the cane, the glasses, the armband with three dots. Sometimes I’d even get a girl as a guide on my arm. I’d have to remember to take my watch off though! Yes, being a blind man is the best way to observe people…”

Herr Christian goes on to confess that he still works as a private detective today, so is ‘pretty much doing the same job now as back then’. And Herr Christian is by no means an isolated case – after the fall of the Berlin Wall tens of thousands of ex-Stasi men sought alternative employment as private detectives, security agents and policemen (see this Spiegel article on ‘Stasi Recycling’ for more details). So, even today, many former Stasi agents seem to have found it difficult to leave their former ‘spy games’ behind.

For a full review of Anna Funder’s Stasiland, see my previous blog post here

About the Author:

Dr Kelly Hignett is a historian and a lecturer at Leeds Beckett University. Kelly’s interests primarily relate to communist and post-communist Eastern Europe.

Kelly’s research focuses on the historical analysis of crime and social deviance, particularly in the central and east European region and the former USSR; crime, deviance and underground movements/sub-cultures in communist regimes; the evolving relationship between state and society and experiences of ‘the everyday’ under communism. Her PhD research drew on a combination of archival research and oral testimony to explore the evolution of criminal networks in East Central Europe from the 1970s to the early post-communist period. Kelly has previously published articles in several peer-review journals and edited collections, contributed a series of shorter articles to publications including New Eastern Europe and Jane’s Intelligence Digest and presented numerous papers about her research internationally, in countries including the UK, USA, Poland, Slovakia, Lithuania, Germany and Morocco.

More recently Kelly has been researching drug abuse and the development of domestic drug markets in late socialist east central Europe. Her next major research project will focus on political repression in communist-era Czechoslovakia.

In addition to continuing to develop her research into crime, deviance and dissent Kelly is also interested in the historical borderlands of Eastern Europe. From initial research into the historical development of crime and attempts to control crime in border regions, she has become increasingly interested in some of the broader historical, political and socio-economic aspects of life among communities who have historically existed on the margins of state control. She plans to develop her initial research into a broader comparative study of this area.